Democrats fight to end trial

Democrats fight to end trial

Sunday 7 February 1999 13.08 EST
First published on Sunday 7 February 1999 13.08 EST

President Bill Clinton's prosecutors yesterday produced the witness at the centre of the Whitehouse scandal, Monica Lewinsky, as their last gasp attempt to get Clinton removed from office appeared to have imploded.

Behind the scenes, the President's Democratic Party supporters were seeking to outmanoeuvre the drama of the day with a redraft of a censure motion that would finally let the President off the hook.

According to party sources in the office of Californian Senator Diane Feinstein, the compromise motion, rejected in the House of Representatives before Christmas, could be ready soon after the closing arguments tomorrow.

Democrat strategists said the censure might give the Republicans a way out of their entanglement as they face the prospect of acquital after what would then have been a year of pointless scandal.

It now seems certain that the trial will come to a conclusion on 12 February, with the Republicans having invested millions of dollars but without sufficient votes in the Senate to guarantee Clinton's removal in what will be a partisan vote.

However, the political shock came not on Capitol Hill but in a TV studio during a pre-recorded interview with maverick Senator Robert Byrd, who days ago proposed the Senate motion to throw out the case against Clinton. He said that on the basis of Lewinsky's description of events, he now did consider the President's behaviour to constitute 'high crimes and misdemeanours.' He declined to say which way he would vote on Friday.

Unexpectedly for those Americans who bothered to watch Lewinsky's performance, it was a didactic mix-and-match, a fine cut, carefully-collaged piece of theatre.

But the trump card for the Democrats came in the debate as Lewinsky said she did not believe that she had had 'sexual relations' with the President because there was no sexual intercourse, a reinforcement of Clinton's repeatedly stated position that oral sex was not 'sexual relations.'